…one of the issues I have with those sites [YouTube, Vimeo] is that they’re still stuck in this broadcast-mode type of mentality where you post something and it’s there, and any sort of interactivity takes place in the form of a list.
Obviously, there’s so much you can do with that, and you can expand it in so many ways. I feel like the iPad is going to help people start to see movies as datasets, instead of linear pieces that you look at from beginning to end, so people start navigating these spaces more horizontally.
—
Ryan Trecartin on interactivity and non-linear video online
The importance of interactivity in digital texts and how that differentiates old and new media.
Not all digital texts are interactive, but those that aren’t could usually be taken out of the computer and played by another medium.
Ryan asks what this might mean for narrative form and storytelling, and as a self-diagnosed, scaffold-loving, traditional narrative fanatic, I am also interested in what the future might look like in an ever-expanding networked media.
I really like these diagrams of plot graphs Ryan provided – they offer a range of perspectives on narrative that don’t necessarily have to conform to the traditional structure.
I found most interesting what Ryan raised in the last section, that interactivity is an umbrella term that covers a wide variety of relations between the user and the text. So far in the examples of hypertext I’ve looked into, at least online, I’ve had to simply click different sections and links and I’ve been transported to a different story segment. But where else could this idea of interactivity lead as technology progresses? Admittedly, I’m still transfixed by the idea of a build your own adventure theme park, but the directions that could be followed… I can’t begin to fathom.
Links:
On Evan Williams’ newly launched publishing platform, Medium, a big focus is on sharing and collaboration. Articles are arranged by themes so that readers can contribute and gravitate toward content that fits their likes. The comments are set up to aid in that too. They’re not at the end of the piece, but sprinkled throughout, paragraph by paragraph. The aim is to foster dynamic discussions around what you’re interested in.
“The crowd can actually improve the quality of the content,” says Williams, who also co-founded microblogging site Twitter. “Our goal is to create a better place to read and write.”
Television has already grown to have what AMC calls the “two–screen experience” with certain shows. The new NBC show, Hannibal (which I recommend highly), live tweets during its episodes, and Sam Witwer live tweets during the SyFy show Being Human for both the East and West Coast air times.
So let me bring this back to the issue that spurred this blog: ensemble casts and the changing nature of big movies.
The world’s first interactive street-furniture installation is for Nokia’s N-90 and the moment it detects a pedestrian it springs into life. The monolith-like installation first swivels either right or left to ensure that the creative message is directly in front of the consumer. It then snaps a photograph of the person and displays it on a screen.
There is no way to deny that fact static pages just don’t cut it anymore. With every company combining social media profiles with their standard websites, designers are discovering more and more that creating a successful site means embracing interactivity.
Internet users view countless websites each day, so as a brand you need to figure out how to stand out and make your mark in the mind of the viewer. One of the best ways to do this is to incorporate interactive elements on your site. The goal is to draw the customer in and engage them through interactive element—innovative scroll navigation, animated characters or unique click controls. Whatever you choose to do you have to make it worth talking about.
Interaction is something as simple as pressing Space to make the story continue, and as complex as deciding the fate of a universe based on your actions. Such interactive storytelling breaks down into three rough categories. There are games that wish to tell you their story, and ask you to complete tasks that allow it to be told. There are games that have stories which can go in multiple directions, and allow you to choose which of these pre-determined routes to take. And there are games that provide a template in which you can tell your own story.
A very important factor of interactivity in games is how the player experiences and learns about the story. Audio, visuals, and other elements of a game help to create truly interactive experiences.
I’m feeling thoroughly confused about hypertext the more I read about it. To me it seems like it is one of those things that you have to be enveloped in to understand – from the examples I’ve read online I feel I have an understanding of what hypertext is, however the theory surrounding it is exhausting.
I gather the non-linear aspect and the challenging of the narrative and the literary form – something I find quite interesting and amazing: how can people make these beautiful and intricate stories that can be read like a pretzel and still make sense?! But personally I’m still drawn to the story as a having a distinct thread, a definitive sense of change and growth, however I’m willing to admit that that may be simply because that’s all I’ve ever been taught before: the linear is ingrained just as the essay, just as the one size fits all approach to education.
A big design fiction-esque question raised in Landow‘s piece on hypertext is how it might affect the literary form. Blogs may be a perfect form to me at the moment. I love the idea of being able to read a piece with a definitive beginning and ending, yet also given the option to explore within the story. I can come back to the section I was up to, or I can read from start to end and then go through the 57 tabs I opened.
I like the idea that “hypertext … makes certain elements … stand out the first time” – going back to the blog example, there’s something about the blue underlined text that encapsulates the same way the yellow highlighted section in a reading does.
“Hypertext story space is multidimensional and theoretically infinite.”
Sometimes I finally feel like I understand hypertext, then go on a website devoted to a hypertext story and all I feel is welling rage and fury because I DON’T UNDERSTAND.
I’m trying to remember that it’s not broken just because it’s uncomfortable, to make it relevant, and just because I don’t get it doesn’t mean it’s ‘bad’, but this is a hard practice when my precious scaffolding of beginning, middle, end is taken away. I’m acknowledging I like the scaffolding.
Ok breathe Zo, breathe. Douglas‘ explanation of the Titanic choose-your-own-adventure actually sounds really cool: “It is 9.30PM: you have slightly more than four hours to wend your way through a series of tortuous plots and subplots, deciding which to follow and which to bypass, before the ship begins her plunge to the ocean floor.”
Hmm, perhaps hypertext has a place in theme park type scenarios? What if that Titanic CD-ROM could be played out in a theme park inside a huge ship, with its “elegiac music,” “eight decks of public rooms” and “well-written characters”.
I’m intrigued by Douglas’ question of whether future readers will read print works differently to how they do now with the increase in interactive mediums. This is very interesting, and now I am recalling my feelings of inadequacy at predicting the future. I’m sure it’s true that I listen to a vinyl record differently to how my father would have in the 70s – I can pick the differences between the vinyl and an mp3, which I am accustomed to, with ease. I too wonder what specifics will be picked up when future readers read a print text, just as I can get transfixed on the sound of the needle being placed on a record, or that unique sound of dust that doesn’t exist in a digital rendering.
Sir Ken Robinson‘s TEDtalk and Paul Graham‘s Age of The Essay make some provoking points about traditional education and how they may not necessarily be the best fit for the extraordinary presence of human creativity. We humans are complex creatures, and this one size fits all approach doesn’t do the majority of learners any favours.
As a third year student (I changed degrees, long story) I feel like I’ve changed so completely since starting university, and this subject has opened up a whole side of reflection that has made me both proud of the ways in which I’ve changed, and excited for the changes that are bound to come. However, “the seeds of our miserable high school experiences were sown in 1892” and my high school education was the typical academic-based model: only one art subject was available for study in VCE, and yet three maths subjects and three English subjects were happily offered. I’ve always found expressing myself easier in writing than speaking, so English was an easy choice. But the compulsory mathematics subject saw a lot of tears and turmoil endured, and for what consequence? It’s the age old joke that we’ll never use algebra in real life.
It baffles me and to a point it actually enrages me that schools make maths, reading and writing more important than painting, drawing, singing and dancing, when we used painting, drawing, singing and dancing to express ourselves before we invented maths, reading and writing. I tend not to dwell on regrets, but I do often find myself wishing I concentrated on one or two real passions in high school instead of trying to be the well-rounded, ‘perfect’ student that my school asked us to strive for. Similarly, I am constantly torn between doing the uni work I’m forced to do as part of assessment, and the new book I bought because of something I found when doing a uni reading, or writing about another facet that isn’t marked as part of my degree.
I often also think that a lot of stress could have been, and could continue to be, avoided if highly visual or abstract learners were given the opportunity and freedom to learn the way that best suits them. In maths in particular I often made no progress and felt incredibly stupid, disheartened and like I was a failure. If only it was made clear to me that I was allowed to better at some subjects over others; that it wasn’t me that was broken, it was education structure.
There isn’t an institution on the planet that teaches children to dance everyday as it does mathematics. Why?
Robinson asserts that intelligence is diverse. “We think about the world in all the ways we experience it: we think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically, we think in abstract terms, we think in movement.” I can’t help but feel somewhat disenfranchised at the education system. How many great minds have been medicated and great ideas have been quelled simply because they didn’t fit the mold? Jillian isn’t sick, she’s a dancer.
As of my post a couple of days ago, I’m trying to be brave. I’m prepared to be wrong in the interest of creating something original. Some days it has to be a constant reminder to myself and some days it comes easily.
Reading Weinberger’s ‘Small Pieces Loosely Joined’ I’m drawn to the idea of the internet allowing you to “‘try on’ a personality.” Although AOL’s golden era of 1999 has passed, we’re still able to ‘try on’ different personas, or even simply act/write/share differently depending on the audience the medium might afford. Personally I have two Tumblrs, both anonymous, with one themed and one that is basically used to waste time scrolling, reblogging gifs and over-sharing my at least 12 feelings late at night. In contrast, different personas are experimented with over other platforms: Twitter, Facebook, different blogs. Similarly, .Zannah has her two web pages, which Weinberger fittingly describes as “the views two different friends might have of her.”
a majestic stealthy cold blooded killer
This idea of experimentation and play threads back to design fiction, and could prove a useful tool in these diegetic prototypes.
Weinberger does raise the question that may well keep me up all night tonight though:
The very basics of what it means to have a self-identity through time – an “inner” consistency, a core character from which all else springs – are in question on the Web.
What is my online identity when I have so many facets online, or even day-to-day? I know I act differently around different audiences, my parents versus my best friends versus strangers for example, just as I post different content on distinct platforms.
This reading also alludes to four key ideas which I find quite interesting that disconnects the Web from ‘the real world’:
Space – the Web is a space that occupies no space.
Time – we determine when and how long we will participate based solely on what suits us.
Self – as mentioned above, we adopt names, identities and personas.
Knowledge – the lively plurality of voices sometimes can and should outweigh the stentorian voice of experts.
_________
The article also explores if the internet is making us more or less social, which reminded me of a post I made in early 2012 on Media Musings. I’ll post it below:
It’s a little bit (or a lot) one-sided at the moment, but you have the ability to reply to what I say, and I can respond back again in the comments section. I can find my peers’ blogs, and we can converse and share our opinions there.
“We are tempted to think that our little “sips” of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don’t. E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places — in politics, commerce, romance and friendship. But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation.”
“The internet connects us to the entire world, but it is a world bespoke, edited, deleted, sanitised. … There is no time for the thesis, antithesis, synthesis of Socratic dialogue, the skeleton of true conversation.”
It’s a concept that’s been around for a while: The Week’s 2010 blog laments that “twenty-somethings are just illiterate in the nonverbal language that much of our social and workplace lives runs on” because of iPhones and Facebook, while Socrates even had an aversion to the newest technology of the time: ”[It] destroys memory [and] weakens the mind, relieving it of…work that makes it strong. [It] is an inhuman thing.” (Socrates was talking about writing!)
The apparent long lost art of conversation courtesy of Search Engine People Blog via Flickr
It seems every so often an, dare I say it, ‘older’ person, perhaps a generation or two above the generation they are criticising, will bemoan the technological devices of the present day and idealise the past. There’s always the “good old days,” the “back in my day,” the pre-text, pre-email, pre-writing era.
But I think what they look past is that the internet is a whole different world for everyone, and is especially beneficial for those who need an outlet of expression or support not afforded to them in the physical world.
Forums allow everyone from students to transgender people to those living with mental illness to converse, perhaps in a way that is impossible in the ‘real’ world. To say these conversations are less fulfilling and important than face-to-face ones, ignores and dismisses the reality and worth of these people’s lives.
Modern day “conversation”? Courtesy of Bright Meadow via Flickr
Personally, I feel increasing portals of social media (ironic it’s called “social” media, no?) herald the death of connection over conversation.
Social media means the conversation never stops, never sleeps. It’s being connected to someone on a real and deep level that seems to have been misplaced.
I’m talking connecting, not in the technological sense, not in the weird Avatar connecting your hair to a tree/animal/other person sense (unless you’re using that metaphorically, then that could be quite nice), but in the deeply humanistic sense.
As much of a dork as I sound, I mean on the mind, body and soul level.
I can count my close friends on my hands, and most of them are the people I went to school with and saw every single day for five years, while my Facebook friends number into the hundreds.
Heaps of Facebook friends, how many real ones? Courtesy of dan taylor via Flickr
I never find myself stumped for conversation with these Facebook friends, or with the people I follow on Twitter or Tumblr, but I don’t feel truly connected with any of them.
Dr Vannevar Bush’s ‘As We May Think‘ is another article that has amazed me on some clever individuals’ forward thinking, a true testament to WHAT IF.
It’s also made me think about more recent possibilities that has come about because someone was brave enough to imagine and see their idea come to fruition.
Aside from these girls, Elif Bilgin, S.M. Sambavi and Ann Makosinski respectively, (all 16 or younger) making me feel extremely inadequate, they are outrageously inspiring.
an approach to design that speculates about new ideas through prototyping and storytelling
the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change
Some examples of this diegetic prototyping, also described as the fictional making as a way to think about real things, can be found on the aptly named Tumblr: Diegetic Prototypes.
I particularly like the ‘Robot readable world’ video below, which has immediately sparked numerous ‘What if?’s and ‘How can we use this?’s and ‘What about if?’s, so despite some trepidation in reading about diegetic prototyping, I think I might be a convert after seeing some examples.
the only way to learn how to ride a bike is by riding a bike.
… to unify and and organize in the right way, so as to clarify and simplify our computer and working lives, and indeed to bring literature, science, art and civilization to new heights of understanding, through hypertext.
The ‘cloud’ we use, both cloud services and file sharing services, as well as the ….. sphere of endless websites all linking, borrowing and reappropriating each other ….. however Nelson’s article also makes it clear how far there is to go.
What if, what if, what if! Certainly there are also endless opportunities to revolutionise and keep literature, science, art and civilisation evolving as new service emerge out of ideas born from design fiction and diegetic prototypes.
This diagram from the reading shows the concept of moving from hard copy to soft copy, and I think a modern equivalent to some extent is Ancestry.com – a website specialising in making hard copy documents available online (for a price).
In fact this reading is quite prophetic, expecting the increase in cloud-like software and even the changes in organisations such as schools and universities. What is most terrifying is perhaps that 2020, the year that Nelson asked readers to imagine as far off in to the future, is now not so far away at all. But undoubtedly even in the next mere seven years, what technologies and gadgets that will be used most prolifically haven’t even been conceived yet.
Something a bit unkempt, even dishevelled. Smart, a lot – too many – of ideas. A sea indeed of ideas. An ocean of ideas. And there’s networked media. A boat. Certainly not a big one. Doesn’t really have a sail but there is some sort of mast to pin something on, against, to. Or a motor. Not adrift. It bobs, floats, weaves. Seeks and follows eddies of the breeze, currents, a wave. Sometimes it gets blown and washed around, other times darting along with deliberate intent revelling in its boat knowledge of breeze, current, wave. There is no shore. Not at least to be seen. Anywhere. All ocean, and because it is all water one place is as well as close enough, or further away, than any other. Each wave is different. Different enough to have a difference, a difference that matters. This gives this ocean contour, currents, eddies and tides. You dip an oar, seeking something over there, enjoying the whirl and whorl of water around the oar.
As a speculative curriculum, I find this metaphor for what we are studying quite fitting. The symbolism of water, rough tides, navigating a boat through a somewhat-but-not-always predictable atmosphere – these ideas readily lend themselves to something so ‘fluid’ as the changing media landscape and the places we can go both laterally and vertically. I’m a creative non-fiction fan, so I’m looking forward to playing with fiction and voice in this critical thinking and writing about the subject.
Making waves
In the tutorial I found myself thinking about how different aspects fit in to this metaphoric idea – I especially liked the idea of tsunami’s as changing paradigms, uprooting what we think of as knowledge with possible devastation, for more creative and interesting outcomes forming in it’s wake. The possibilities for networked media are truly unrealised, and I’m excited to be entering the industry in this time of creative change and innovation. I really don’t know what to expect.
